Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner

John Lautner (1911-94) grew up in the north woods,
grounded in the observation of nature. His great subject was the
uncovering of space, and in its exploration of structures and
shapes that would accomplish that task, his work was shockingly
original.

Standing on a site, I seek its particular and
unique expression with all the senses....until the natural setting,
the character of the owners, and the design harmoniously become a
single idea./John Lautner

Lautner's adventures in structure, line, siting, and materials
were undertaken in a quest not for effect but for spatial poetry.
Believing that a building should awaken a transcendental
understanding of the environment through conversation with its
setting, he sought an architecture in which the sublime becomes
familiar and the familiar sublime.

Between Earth and Heaven journeys through Lautner's world of
ideas: their genesis, growth, and complex interactions. What we
discover is a mind at once disciplined and structured, yet subtle
and fluid. This is reflected in an architecture that is rigorous
and at the same time flexible. The tension makes the subsequent
histories of his completed buildings especially interesting.

Photo: Joshua WhitePhoto: Joshua White

The exhibition looks in depth at 6 works that capture - at
different scales, in different topographies - the essence of
Lautner's conversation with space.

Beyer Residence, Los Angeles, 1983
At the Beyer Residence the concrete structure straddles a rocky
point on the Malibu shore, following the form of the rock pools,
waves, or clouds to shape space, bringing a fixed and sheltering
room into conversation with mobile, ever-changing vistas of sea and
cloud.

Photo: Joshua WhitePhoto: Joshua White

Elrod Residence, Palm Springs, 1968
For this residence, on a rocky spur above Palm Springs, Lautner
excavated the lot eight feet under the boulders and sand "to make a
design built into the rock and desert" using the geology as part of
the structure.

Walstrom Residence, Los Angeles, 1969
Lautner chose to build in timber for this modest two-bedroom house
on the south side of the Hollywood Hills.

The separation of the house from the hill is achieved by resting
the wooden frame on a concrete foundation at street level and on
two anchor beams that slope into the hillside, allowing him to
eliminate all retaining walls and leave a vertical clear space
inside.

Pearlman Mountain Cabin, Idyllwild, 1957
This weekend house was designed for listening to music played
against the alpine landscape. The gigantic boulder on the narrow
steep lot presented a massive challenge.

Lautner sat on the great rock for an entire day slowly imagining a
lightweight open cylinder taking shape around him; a circular
platform for a floor, floating just above the boulder, the flat
gray disk of a roof dropping gently over it, stripped tree trunks
used as giant supporting posts, part of a sunburst, in a zigzag
mitered wall of glass that opened to the view, and much of a moon,
in a curving wall set against the hillside, covered like a cave in
cement plaster and ending at a focal hearth.

Photo: Joshua WhitePhoto: Joshua White

Chemosphere, Los Angeles, 1960
Lautners most ambitious attempt at demonstrating a repeatable
standardized dwelling system was both heralded and scorned by the
international press as a space-age form. Chemosphere was not only a
reasonable solution to working on a 45-degree slope, it was also an
eminently workable economic model for the efficient living capsule
of the future.

Marbrisa, Acapulco,1973
This villa is essentially a small portion of an inverted cone,
anchored against the cliff.

Its main space, floating out towards the diaphanous light and
vague horizon of the Pacific, is an open deck.

Bordered by a swimming channel and spilling out at its ocean
side to a freely molded edge, the floor takes an increasingly
irregular form as it stretches out towards the sea. A vast flying
canopy curves upwards to draw the breezes, shield the tropical sun,
and meet the sky.

As concerned with modest homes or roadside diners, as with
luxury retreats, Lautner invested every project with the same
generous "feeling of freedom." This led to an increasingly radical
sense of continuity between the spaces he built and the world
around them, and to a revolutionary fluency in shaping and
structuring space.

The exhibition was curated by historian Nicholas Olsberg and
architect Frank Escher.

The exhibition will be on view through October 12, 2008

If you happen to be in Los Angeles on October 12th the Hammer
Museum has organized a tour to the Sheats/Goldstein Residence
(1963). It is well worth taking.

Photo: arcspace

An international tour for Between Earth and Heaven: The
Architecture of John Lautner will include The Lighthouse, Centre
for Architecture, Design and the City Glasgow, Scotland, March 19 -
July 26, 2009; the Wolfsonian - Florida International University in
Miami Beach, Fla. October 15, 2009 - January 17, 2010; and the Palm
Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, Ca. February 20 - May 23,
2010.

A richly illustrated and comprehensive full-color catalogue
accompanies the exhibition.